Spring in a Snowy Country

第1話 Reading Masumi's Travelogue

Masumi Sugae, whose real name was Eiji or Hideo Shirai, left his hometown of Mikawa at the age of 28 in the early year of the Tenmei era（1783） and spent 48 New Year's holidays one after another in the snow in the snow country until his death in Kakunodate, Dewa at the age of 76. The diary of his travels was later entitled "Masumi's Travelogue" and is now scattered in some 70 volumes in libraries around the country. It was unspeakably involuntary to this kind observer of commoner life that the circulation of this travelogue was hampered by the very fine colored autograph pictures that accompanied it, which served as an explanatory aid to the text.

entitle......（動）題名を付ける

scatter......（動）散り散りになる

unspeakably......（副）言い表せないくらい

involuntary......（形）不本意な

commoner......（名）一般人

hamper......（動）妨げる、妨害する

autograph......（形）自筆の

explanatory......（形）解説の

For a long time now, I have been visiting his old acquaintances' houses and especially his family's villages in Mikawa, trying to find out how he started such a lonely and painstaking lifelong journey, but I haven't even been able to locate his birthplace yet. Reading his travelogue, I can imagine that he had some unusual circumstance at that time that led him to bury his 100 waka poems remembering his parents vainly in the snow in such a distant land, but the travelogue is not a private diary in which he talks about his own life. As I was proofreading "Spring in a Snowy Country", I remembered and opened the New Year's chapters of some of the volumes again to pick them up, but what came to my attention more vividly than the colorful early spring events in the villages was the figure of him sitting by the fireplace, gazing aimlessly. From the night of New Year's Eve to dawn was a time when there was no time to spare, as the master would have a divine festival and his wife would be preparing food, and not only was there not one task to be assisted by a traveling literary person who was only here this year, but there could not have been anyone to settle down and talk with. If it was even a sparkling, sunny day outside, he would go outside and look at the mountains and listen to the sparrows, but when the snow was blowing hard, there was nothing to do. Even though the guest who came to greet the New Year was an easy-going talker, he was a somewhat serious man with an aversion to alcohol. He could not help but think of the New Year in his hometown.

painstaking......（形）骨が折れる

lifelong......（形）生涯にわたる

birthplace......（名）出生地

vainly......（副）むなしく

proofread......（動）校正する

aimlessly......（副）目的もなく

easy-going......（形）呑気な、気楽な

aversion......（名）嫌悪